Vanity Kills, page 8
Criminal Case #: 7-23-mu-187462-OB
Translated to digital transcript by Mary J. Stearns
Subject Name: Angie REDACTED
Date: 7/04/REDACTED
Written Journal Entry: I got up and made breakfast and I felt fine. No fever or headache or nausea. Nothing that was mentioned in the entry packet you gave us.
I did, however, peel back the bandage on my thigh this morning after showering to see how my dog bite is healing and I noticed something weird. The incision itself seems to have healed almost completely (which is the fastest I feel like I’ve ever healed from anything, so thank you! This medicine really does work!) but beneath the incision site, I noticed I could feel some bumps beneath the skin. They’re tiny. And very hard. They feel like three or four small necklace beads under there. Is that normal?
Time Symptom Started: This morning. 7/4
Time Symptom Cleared:
Location on Body: Upper thigh, beneath where incision scar used to be.
Severity:
28
Fisher pops a hot plate of bacon down at the end of the table between he and Jack. Jack stares at the heavenly, greased meat. The sound of the sizzle brings him right back to that awful moment in time when the meat being cooked was his own. He shivers, despite being swathed in layers. He tears his gaze away from the pork and rests it on a cooling stack of pancakes, watching the slow waterfall of butter pour off the side.
“Alright, y’all.” Fisher points at the plates. “You got your grits, scrambled eggs, sunny-side-up eggs, flapjacks, avocado toast, and, of course, bacon.” He sits. The large, frayed tear in the knees of his distressed jeans spreads like a cervix giving birth to the hair-covered cartilaginous joints beneath.
Angie shovels some eggs onto a plate and passes it to Iris. Chase takes some cheesy grits. The plates go around in a flurry and utensils clatter against the china until everyone is finished.
“I think we should say grace,” Alan utters, voice nearly baritone and sedate.
Chase snickers.
Alan’s black hair catches air as he whips his head. His lips are pursed tight. The sinew in his neck stretches as he presses his molars together. “Something funny?”
“Just you pretending to be religious is all.” Chase stares forward at nothing, not daring to make eye contact with the angry man beside him. His black fingers are steepled in front of him, gold rings shimmering in the morning sun pouring in through the panoramic windows wrapping around the dining room.
“I’m not pretending.” Alan tries to soften his tone, barely speaking up, struggling hard to control his explosive anger. It’s always been a problem for him and he feels the heat rushing across his face. Has been, ever since Chase laughed.
“You alleged Christians never think you are. Always picking and choosing the parts of it all that suit you and abandoning the rest.”
“Well, the bible’s got a lot to say about your kind.” His words are cold. Everyone at the table feels tense, staring at their plates, hoping the confrontation won’t persist.
But it does.
“Yeah, yeah. You wanna quote your precious fuckin’ Leviticus to me now?”
Alan tosses his fork back to his plate with a clatter and he runs his tongue on the inside of his closed mouth, tight with frustration. He leans back in his chair and crosses his arms. “You don’t like it. I’d be pissed, too, if I knew I was going to Hell.”
“Ha!” Chase rolls his eyes dramatically at Alan.
“Guys,” Fisher holds his hands out flat in the air, avoiding eye contact with either of them like an impartial referee. “C’mon. Let’s just eat.”
“Nah. Depeche Mode over here wants to school y’all in Leviticus.” Chase throws his hands up in the air. “C’mon now. Tell us what Leviticus says about my kind.”
Silence.
“Awww, don’t get shy on me now, Hot Topic.” Chase runs a shaking hand across his shiny head, a nervous tic he displays in moments of stress. “You fake-ass zealots may look different, but y’all are the same predictable-ass broken record. Know what Leviticus actually says? ‘Cause I can tell ya. It says: A man shall not lie with another man as he does a woman. You know what other dumb shit Leviticus forbids? Having your hair unkempt,” Chase points to Alan’s shaggy hair with a flourish, “tearing your clothing, bearing a grudge, and mixing fucking fabrics, for God’s sake! Picking and choosing the parts of religion that suit you doesn’t make you pious, it makes you a hypocrite.”
Alan shoves the chair out with a groan, snatches up his plate full of food, and storms out the front door. They can see the mottled silhouette of him through the decorative glass windows as he plops onto a bench swing hanging on the front wrap-around porch. No one speaks.
Chase grabs his fork and angrily starts digging into his grits, shoving angry forkfuls into his mouth.
Fisher groans, leaning back in his chair, draping one tattooed arm over the wooden back of it. His gray eyes pierce Chase and he calmly speaks with an upward nod. “You two gonna be at each other like this the whole time? ‘Cause that’s gonna make for a long couple’a weeks, if so.”
“Whadday want from me?” Chase says, gulping down a cheesy bite of the mash. “The guy’s a dick.”
“Yeah, he is. But you don’t gotta egg him on all the time.”
“Oh, so now this is my fault somehow?” Chase looks around, pressing his fingertips into his firm chest.
Jack opens his mouth, as if to speak, but stumbles on his words. “No, no one is saying this is your fault. He’s just saying--”
“I KNOW what he’s saying, dude, alright? I’m not an idiot. I graduated Phi Theta Cappa, with honors. I’m not stupid. I just don’t see why, in this day and age, I still gotta put up with this kind of bigoted bullshit. If it’s not because I’m black, it’s because I’m fuckin’ queer. I feel like I can’t go any-damn-where without some idiot like that telling me whats right and wrong. Bet he didn’t even finish high school.”
A somber hush falls over the group and they start to eat. Chase drops his fork down, leaning back in his chair, too. He speaks with humility, bobbing his head.
“I’m sorry, guys. I didn’t mean to ruin your morning with this nonsense.”
Jack reaches out a bandaged hand and pats Chase’s shoulder, as if to say its all going to be alright. A soft smile emerges from beneath the cowl of his hoodie.
Chase drums on the table repeatedly to chase away the darkened cloud that feels like it is looming overhead. “Alright y’all, what kinda activities are we gonna get into today?”
29
Jack smiles, bashful beneath the hood of his jacket. As Iris looks at him, he suddenly forgets how sweltering it is beneath all of the fabric in the late afternoon sun. He’s no longer focused on roasting like poultry in an oven, as salty streams of sweat bead around the bandaged-half of his face and beneath his cotton t-shirt and hoodie sleeves.
No. When she smiles, he feels pleasantly dizzy, focusing on the wrenching fist grabbing his guts and twisting.
He can’t, for the life of him, understand why she is giving him the time of day but, every day, she seems more genuinely charmed by him. She machine-guns questions at him, trying to get to know him, and he doesn’t mind it in the slightest. Every one seems to make him feel a touch giddier than the last. There are moments that he almost can’t even meet her eyes with his own because he knows he won’t be able to pull away. Instead, lingering there for a too-long amount of time.
But he has a mirror.
He knows that the first time he makes a move, it will be met with the awkward silence and the, “I like you, but, more as a friend.” Things aren’t like they used to be for Jack. He can’t just flash that charming grin to get someone’s attention or spout a cheesy, effortless line and snag a woman’s number. Those days are gone and Jack has, for the last few years, been able to wrap his head around that. No matter how much he wants to kiss someone, no matter how much he wants to feel what it’s like to be inside her, to make her moan, to watch her body react to his, to feel her skin grow hot beneath his touch… he knows that those days are gone for good, living only in his wildest fantasies now.
As she takes the paddles from the hooks on the wall and grabs the front handle of the canoe, she giggles something about an old man she met in a nude drawing class. He tries his best to follow along, doing what he can to focus on her story and not the sweet smile on her face or the way her stunning skin glows, framed by faraway jellyfish-tendrils of hanging Spanish moss in the treeline near the road out.
He tries his best to enjoy the attention and the time with her before she wises up and realizes she could be in the company of anyone in the house more attractive than him.
As he replies with a story about someone he met in a college psych class and lifts the back end of the canoe, he catches a glimpse of Walsh’s prying eyes, glowering at them both from around the nearby corner of his modest clinic. He’s holding a metal bowl full of water, jaw tense as if his teeth are clenched at the mere sight of Jack.
Jack’s story stops mid-sentence and he stands, frozen, locking into the stare with the old man. He’s seen that look of burning hate from across the way before and, even years later, it still turns his blood to ice water.
“We were just…” Jack started but couldn’t finish, standing impotently in the tall grass holding a heavy canoe.
Walsh sets the bowl down on the ground, never taking his eyes off of Jack until he stands fully again. He forces a placid smile at Iris and manages a half-wave. “You two have fun now. Watch out for the snakes while you’re out on the water. They’ll come right up to the boat.”
Iris smiles, hopeful and bright, smoothing the obvious tension with her positive demeanor. “Thank you, sir.”
“Gonna be a nice sunset soon.” He says as he shuffles back around the corner. He whistles, ultra-loud and clear. From across the front of the property, the catahoula comes running full-speed, like a playful pup, even though he’s aging. He skids to a stop at the water bowl, lapping up the cold fluid with unflappable greed, gobbling it sloppily as the two make their way toward the bayou’s edge with the dinky boat for two.
The sight of the spotted fur and judging eyes of the canine make Jack feel light-headed.
“What did she do then?” Iris chuckles, already reverting back to their prior conversation. “Did she concede on the Freud thing?”
“Huh?” Jack asks, far away now. The sight of the dog is too jarring. He can feel his heart racing at the sight of it.
Iris looks back over her bandaged shoulder blade, flashing a gleaming smile that wrenches his insides like an alligator in a death-roll. He feels like he wants to drop the canoe and collapse into the damp thatch of wild grass beneath his feet.
Instead, he utters, “Yeah,” and laughs nervously.
But the word is just meaningless noise to him, trailing into some empty abyss. Between the sudden appearance of Walsh and that goddamned dog… he’s completely forgotten what he’s even agreeing to.
30
Walsh leans back in his office chair, bobbing mindlessly as he studies Fisher’s patient journal, flitting his eyes back and forth between the hand-written pages and the twenty-eight-year-old’s oceanic eyes, brimming with excitement. Fisher hangs in the silence, waiting for the doctor to smile.
Walsh places the journal on his desk and rubs the gray stubble on his stern face. “Is this true?”
He nods so hard he resembles a flicked bobble-head doll. “If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’, doc.”
Walsh motions with his head for Fisher to head out to the exam room. “Hop up there in the chair so I can take a look.”
In a flash, Fisher is crunching the butt of his designer jeans down onto the paper liner on the exam room chair. Walsh shuffles over, pulls the glasses hanging by the cord around his neck onto his face and peels back the bandages on the back of Fisher’s right bicep. Where there were once gnarly lumps of scar tissue from skinning himself on jagged asphalt, Walsh now studies the perfectly-healing skin of Fisher’s forearm and elbow.
Instead of celebration, a stony look spreads across his withering face. Fisher can swear he sees a glimmer of panic in the old man’s eyes and his smile fades.
“What’s wrong, doc?” Fisher braces himself for the bad news.
Walsh realizes he’s battling a panicked scowl and his expression flits to joyous as if he was walking onstage to give a theatrical performance. “Nothing’s wrong. This is exemplary. You’re healing just as promised.”
He open-palm slaps Fisher in the arm. “Well, then. Congratulations. Looks like you don’t need these any more.” Walsh’s trembling hand peels off the taped-on gauze pads and tosses them in the trash.
Fisher smiles a little, still unnerved by Walsh’s initial reaction.
“Nurse Tate will be by later to return your journal, as usual,” Walsh says, tapping the young man on the shoulder, shooing him up off the seat and out toward the front door. As Fisher collects his water bottle from the interview desk, Walsh grabs Fisher’s packed, manilla patient folder and places his newly-printed hematology results in it from the printer. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Same time.”
Fisher nods with a reverent bow and presses out the glass front door of the building.
The minute the door seals, Walsh screams and tosses the patient folder at the wall, exploding it into a flurry of flying paper like a white firework. He turns back to the blood-work desk and backhands a tray of glass test tubes at the opposite wall. It bursts into a bomb of shattered glass fragments and crimson fluid, leaving Jackson Pollock-esque splatter dripping down the fresh coat of gray-blue latex paint.
He grabs the rolling desk chair at the hematology station and whips it across the room, with a throat-shedding roar, as hard as his aging body will allow.
His chest heaves as he struggles to catch his breath, grinding his brittle molars until they feel like they will crack. He slams his finger down so hard on the intercom button that he nearly breaks the machine.
“Tate! Lab! NOW!” He releases the button and slaps the machine onto the floor.
He’s growling now. He doesn’t know when it started, but he is. He clutches his tightening chest, walks over to the desk safe where the pills are kept and sits in the chair in front of it. He eyes the lock, and rubs his papery fingertips over a tiny gouge where the metal is marred. He leans in, examining the damage closer, and his heart races.
Evidence of tampering…
He can’t seem to get air.
He gasps big breaths in, feeling as though nothing is entering his squashed lungs. He feels like an overweight person is sitting on his chest, just how his fat older brother Louis did when they were kids, threatening to spit on him, crushing the oxygen from his ribcage with thick thighs…
Tate bursts in through the door, already panicked from his tone. She hesitates for a minute, taking in the shattered glass underfoot, the strewn paperwork and an overturned rolling-chair. She sees Walsh struggling for every breath.
“What’s going on?!”
“The… the…” He tries to speak but he can’t, gasping like a drowning man coming up for air.
“Are you having a heart attack,” she shouts, rushing to his side.
He shakes his head. “Panic.” He gulps again, wheezing between breaths, looking like he’s going to pass out. “Attack.”
“Okay. It’s going to be okay. You’re alright, James. Just take slow breaths. Lean over. Head between your knees.” She presses his back and folds him a bit, until his head is below the height of the desk. Her tone is soothing.
“Okay, jeez, I’m rusty at this. We haven’t had to do this in years.” She takes a deep breath herself, thinking. “Okay, lets do the 5-4-3-2-1 thing.”
He nods, sucking in air so fast he’s lightheaded.
“Name five things you can see.”
He looks around, through the black fog, through the stars clouding his dimming vision. “Boat shoes.” He looks down at the brown, canvas shoes on his feet.
“Okay, that’s one.”
“Gold… wa… watch.” He struggles.
“That’s two.”
Walsh looks around, trying to use the intended distraction to find a third item.
He does.
It’s a stray, black pill sitting in the groove of the grout between the floor tiles beneath the desk. His eye grow large, filled with terror.
He’s meticulous about cleanliness. It wasn’t put there by him.
No, no, no, no, no, dear God no, he screams in his own mind, mentally begging deities he doesn’t believe in to make this all some strange misunderstanding.
“Come on, we need three more things you can see,” Tate coos.
As he opens his mouth to speak, he vomits heavily beneath the desk, splattering bile across the clean tile, washing over the loose pill like a violent, ebbing ocean wave.
31
An evening storm rages outside, filling the southern night air with thick, oppressive humidity. Lightning sends bursts of shimmering light through the tufts of clouds looming in the heavens above, momentarily illuminating them like diffused, gray lanterns. The bayou beyond the compound glitters, waters churning and disrupted by the pattering rain falling from the concord-grape-colored sky. The wildlife is quiet, tucked away for the evening in the safest hiding places they can find, and all that sounds out across the vast landscape is the inconsistent roar of bass-filled thunder as it vibrates everything in sight.
Inside, the gaggle of patients are playing charades in the den. It has a breathtaking view of the storm with its wall of windows and large sliding doors. Every time the lightning cracks it illuminates the jovial expressions on their faces.
Iris is up next. She faces her teammates, Jack and Mick.
“Aaaaaand go!” Fisher yells out, staring at his watch.
Angie giggles, popping a square of cheese from the deli platter into her mouth as she watches her competition. Chase hops off the couch to go refill his empty glass of water.
